This season is key for sack king Sapp and his enthusiasm

ORLANDO -- She eyeballed her baby boy from across the kitchen of her spotless Orlando home. Tilting her head and squinting her eyes, Annie Roberts issued a warning to her youngest child.

"I want you to be here. I enjoy you being here. I love that you're going to be here," she says. "But please -- please! -- don't ask your mama to cook for that defensive line. No, I'm not doing it."

On the other side of the room, a lifetime of love, respect and admiration lighted up Warren Sapp's face with more pride than even a four-sack afternoon at Raymond James Stadium would muster. With a grin that seemed to stretch shoulder to shoulder, Sapp hopped off a bar stool, charged his mother and swallowed her up in a 6-foot-2, 300-pound bear hug. "C'mon, Ma!" Sapp begs. "They're coming, you know they're coming! And they won't be coming one time, either. My boys can't come to the 'O' and only eat one time. They'd kill me.

If NFL teams really wanted to neutralize the game's most feared defensive lineman, they'd sign Roberts, 57, to a free-agent deal and plant her on the offensive line.

Even Sapp admits he'd be overmatched.

"That was my world right there," Sapp says. "You talk about work. I saw that ol' girl do it all. I watched her, and I wanted to emulate her in every way."

Sapp has been accused of being a lot of things during his seven highlight-reel seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. But few have dared question his work ethic. It's what Sapp stands for, and he won't stand for less from his teammates. It has been the lifelong source of his athletic drive and the driving force in his behind-the-scenes feud with Bucs wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson.

"The only problem I've ever had with the man is that he doesn't put his work behind his mouth," Sapp says of Johnson. "And it's coming to a head this year, I promise you."

"This year" officially began this week, when the Bucs checked into the Celebration Hotel as a prelim to 24 days of training camp at Disney's Wide World of Sports.

The camp shapes up as maybe the most anticipated in the Bucs' 27-season history. Among the compelling story lines during the next 31/2 weeks will be how the team -- still with its core of superstars but reshaped with a dozen free agents -- responds to fiery new Coach Jon Gruden after six seasons under low-key Tony Dungy.

In the middle of it all, Sapp looks to rebound from maybe the most frustrating season of his career. Last season began with a torn rotator cuff sustained during an exhibition game, an injury that worsened each Sunday and compromised his upper-body strength. It ended with a second consecutive humiliating playoff defeat at Philadelphia and the firing of a coach Sapp likened to a father figure.

In the weeks that followed the 2001 season, the Bucs embarked on a roller-coaster coaching search that eventually yielded Gruden. Throughout the coaching odyssey, Sapp heard his name crop up in trade talks, some of it as bait to get Gruden from Oakland. Upon his arrival, Gruden tried to ease Sapp's mind.

"Warren Sapp is Warren Sapp. He's a great football player, and I want to be a part of his playmaking," said Gruden, who was so impressed in evaluating Sapp that he found a place for him in the offense's goal-line package. "I said from the beginning that he wouldn't be traded unless somebody forked up a small continent.

"We feed off his energy and his playmaking, and I'm counting on him to deliver again for us this season."

So five months shy of his 30th birthday and with a team-record sixth consecutive Pro Bowl in his sights, Sapp is ready for his eighth NFL season. That it's kicking off 21 miles from his childhood stomping grounds of Apopka only adds gas to a fire ready to combust.

"You can question me; it's human nature," says Sapp, whose six sacks in 2001 were the fewest since his 1995 rookie season. "I'm a 29-year-old man who has played more than 7,000 plays the last seven years. It's OK to question if that motor still runs at a high speed."

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As part of Gruden's goal-line package, Sapp saw the new coach put in 30 new red-zone plays in two days. Absentees had to cram during a trio of three-day minicamps, not an easy task considering Gruden has accelerated the practice pace to run 100 plays in the time that Dungy ran 65.

Without going into detail, Gruden and General Manager Rich McKay acknowledged during the off-season that some friction existed between Sapp and Johnson. In the NFL, they reasoned, that happens.

"It's an emotional game played by emotional men," Gruden said.

But if Gruden's first five months demonstrated anything, it's that the Bucs' new coach is far less patient and forgiving than the last. A man who comes to the office at 4 a.m. and leaves 16 hours later wants to see a passion for work.

He hasn't seen it from everybody.

"Like I said," Sapp repeats, "it's coming to a head this year."

Sapp opened '00 and '01 training camps with bold predictions of individual and team achievement. Last summer, following the high-priced additions of quarterback Johnson and defensive end Simeon Rice, he went as far as to suggest that the team would be "dismantled" and that there would be "hell to pay" if the Bucs fell short of championship expectations.

"And nobody listened to me," he says.

He also made headlines when he declared he was going after Mark Gastineau's single-season sack record. Gastineau, at the time, was in jail for battery. Sapp said a convicted felon did not deserve a place in the history books.

"I knew what we were capable of as a defense," he says. "I had a shot."

But before the season began, Sapp tore a hole in his rotator cuff. There were injuries to defensive tackle Anthony McFarland and linebacker Derrick Brooks early in the season. There were adjustment periods for Marcus Jones, who moved from right end to left end, and Rice, the new guy. The combination rendered mortal the once-feared Bucs defense.

Sapp doesn't regret putting his goals out there for all to see. As he has said many times, if you shoot for the moon and miss, you'll be among the stars. His aspirations are high and always will be.

It's telling that maybe the greatest compliment paid Sapp came in the wake of one of the low points of his athletic career. As captain of the '94 University of Miami team, Sapp was on the field to the bitter end when the Hurricanes' NCAA-record 58-game home winning streak ended in a 38-20 loss against Washington. The loss left Sapp in tears.

Yet, until the final gun sounded, in the words of Huskies center Frank Garcia, "He was playing in the fourth quarter like a miracle was going to happen."

Sapp remembers reading the quote.

"That's what I believed. That's what I was taught. That's how I was weaned," he says.

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Sapp motioned toward a room across the house, where his mother was busy folding laundry.

Busy working.

Annie Roberts is glad to have her baby boy home.

But he never really left in the first place.

"I'm a descendent of greatness," Sapp says. "Why shouldn't I dare to be great?"